With angry language about “would-be-theocrats,” the office of Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, the Republican candidate for governor, filed a brief in federal district court this week that shreds religious pharmacists’ arguments that state rules requiring pharmacies to dispense emergency contraception are discriminatory.

Indeed, while there have been national headlines about emergency contraception lately, the Plan B case right here in Washington State went to trial in Federal District Court in Tacoma this month (arguments concluded yesterday) and the AG office’s brief is a primer on the fundamental principle of separation of church and state.

Specifically, the case involves Washington State Board of Pharmacy rules that require pharmacies (not individual pharmacists) to fill Plan B scrips. Storman’s Inc., which owns Ralph’s Thriftway in Olympia, sued back in late 2007 claiming that the rules constituted religious discrimination because they forced pharmacists who believe it’s morally wrong to use emergency contraception to forsake their religious views.

McKenna, who we’d actually initially believed was undermining the state’s defense, doesn’t buy the pharmacists’ argument. At all. His office’s brief argues that religious conservatives have it backwards. The AG’s brief says if exceptions were made for religious beliefs, the would state would be establishing religion, in violation of the First Amendment.